Israel
So, one of the very stupid things that religion makes us do is declare certain spots on earth ‘holy land’. One of the most impressive examples of people not learning from how they’ve been treated is the Jewish occupation of Israel.. as near as I can tell, they are treating other folk almost as awful as they were treated in WWII and they can’t just walk away because it’s “holy land”.
It isn’t, of course. Near as I can tell JHVH was someone’s imagination, and either all land is holy or none of it is, but the stupidity will continue because, yes, religion is a virus, and yes, a bunch of people are infected.
I’m not anti-semitic. However, I can’t look at the situation in Israel without feeling a anger that borders on hatred. Not for all folk of that religion, just for those specific ones. I’m also impressed at how they’ve bought the American political system – as far as I can tell the consulting gig where I was analyzing california voting data looking for signs of fraud was paid for by Israel – they are spending money to manipulate the US political system (which, as we all know, is for sale), and I notice that there are actually *laws* against boycotting israel – and, of course, we keep selling one side and not the other the best guns we can make. Probably some of this is Christianity is derivative of Judaism and a bunch of people in the US are infected with Christianity and therefore they think of one side as “our side” and the other as “infidels”.
I read that most Jewish folk consider the occupation immoral – well, obviously, stealing people’s land and blowing up their houses *is* immoral – but they can’t think of what to do about it. Here’s what you do: You accept there’s no such thing as holy land, and you walk away and let the people who were living there most recently have it. You stop killing people over land and over some really nutty religious thoughts. You walk away.
They won’t, of course. But they should.
As long as I’m opening cans of worms with this article, there’s probably a cautionary tale here about why it’s a really bad idea to think of yourself as “god’s chosen people”. In general, that idea is about as dangerous and as nutty as the idea that there’s one chosen religion and God is going to reward the followers of that religion or punish the adherents of all the others. It’s a horrible idea that leads to horrible outcomes but I can see where as a member of the powers that be that want folk killing other folk just because they’re wearing a different color uniform it’s a delightfully tempting one to sell to the gullible. It does underline the fact that religion has been curated by the powers that be to control the masses.